A Proposal for Integrating Defense in Europe: The European Defence Community Treaty and the Legal Feasibility of Its Revitalization Today

The re-election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States of America and Russia’s aggression of Ukraine poses unprecedented challenges to transatlantic relations and European security. The European Union (EU), in its current configuration, is not prepared to take charge of its defence on its own. This article explores an alternative path to promote defence integration in Europe and proposes to revive the 1952 European Defence Community (EDC) Treaty. The article explains that, from a legal perspective, ratification by even only two states would be sufficient to make the EDC operational today: those states would be France and Italy. Detailed arguments based on public international law, comparative law and domestic constitutional law support this thesis. Of course, the legal feasibility of reviving the EDC does not coincide with the political feasibility, and indeed the article mentions several obstacles and challenges. However, shedding light on the EDC has two advantages. On the one hand, it emphasizes how, through the establishment of a common army, financed by a common budget and governed by supranational institutions, the EDC was a more appropriate response to the European security problem than the current CFSP framework. On the other hand, it identifies a differentiated path to integrating European defence that is more feasible than amending the EU treaties, which would require the agreement of the 27 Member States.